Gruta de Nuestra Señora de Lourdes

At first glance it does not look like a church at all: a dark crag topped with stone battlements, a cross of the same rock at the summit and an iron gate for a door. The Chapel of the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes stands on Calzada de los Fuertes, on the slopes of the Loreto and Guadalupe hill a few minutes from Puebla's historic centre. Milenio reports it as the city's third most visited religious site, after the Cathedral and the Rosary Chapel.

It was the project of Monsignor Agustín de la Cueva, a priest from Chalchicomula de Sesma with a deep devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes. He wanted a basilica; when that proved impossible he built a copy of the Massabielle grotto, where Bernadette Soubirous reported seeing the Virgin in 1858. The land was donated by Cayetano Cosío de Mendoza, owner of the old La Concepción brickworks in the Xanenetla neighbourhood. Accounts of the start date differ: the chapel itself says the first stone was laid in 1948 by Archbishop José Ignacio Márquez y Toriz, while other write-ups put it in 1940 and date the blessing to October 1950. Spanish engineer Francisco de las Heras led the works and took no fee.

The stone is dark and porous. One account says it is xalnene, the fire-resistant volcanic rock once quarried in Xanenetla; another says the monsignor had it brought from the slopes of Pico de Orizaba near his home town. Inside, the small space is shaped like a cave, with rough rock walls, coloured windows added in recent decades, a white marble altar and statues of the Virgin, in white with a pale blue sash, and of Saint Bernadette. Water flows beneath the Virgin, echoing the spring at Lourdes, and many visitors drink it.

Because Lourdes is linked to healing, many who come are sick or praying for someone who is. On 11 February the feast starts at 8 am with Las Mañanitas, continues with Masses including one for the sick, and usually ends in the evening with a concert by the Coro Normalista.